


Old darkness in the cave

by laughingpineapple



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Confrontations, Gen, background genderfluid Tariq, intentional & lampshaded canon divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:42:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22590433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: Old ties from an old life. Gol Golathanian did, in fact, meet the Rope-Caller again in the Downside. He simply wishes he hadn’t.
Relationships: Gol Golathanian & Khaylmer Rope-Caller
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Old darkness in the cave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hecleretical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hecleretical/gifts).



> Happy Chocobox! Thank you for the wonderful prompts! There's that one line like "I went there once but barely remember anything except for the smell" so Tariq also tags along to cameo... About using they/them for Tariq - I got the impression that both heralds, and Tariq especially, are pretty fluid but their life is so long and their changes also take a long time. Like feeling a different name and pronouns once a century or so?

The news came with a gaggle of imps. They came from beyond the coast and flew in a grim spiral around the Eight, until Ha’ub rose to grant them audience. He took their message to the ears of Gol Golathanian, and he to Soliam Murr, who cast his eyes to the South and accepted that his old premonition was correct and life’s mistakes are never far behind:

Khaylmer Rope-Caller, Chief Aide to the Emperor, Grand Traitor, had joined them in the Downside and resided in the imps’ isle within the Deathless Tempest.

Seeing regret cross his liege’s features, Golathanian volunteered to take this burden upon himself and cross the sea to face him. Soliam Murr, whose acquaintance with guilt ran deep and intimate, saw through that offer, saw that it was in truth a plea, unfinished business, an old wound to stitch, saw that his General needed this closure when he himself had long moved on, and so he let him go.

The moon-minstrel joined Golathanian. To chronicle this quest, they said, and they were little more than a lunar breeze in those days, light and unformed, so they fit cozily at the bow of the boat and let the sea spray pass through them as they hummed a tune.

With a steady hand, ever-guided by the moonlight that graced his companion, Gol Golathanian steered his boat through the swirling and shifting currents of the storm and reached the icy calm within.

He had already beaten the tempest once, under Ores’ guidance, when their fellowship had first journeyed toward Mount Alodiel. The ice felt colder now. The imps’ isle loomed ahead, its cliffs death-white and guarded by sharp frozen formations.

A path led away from the shore. The minstrel saw it first but waited, in silence, as if remembering five steps too late that it was not their story to live, not their decisions to make. Golathanian thanked them for showing him the way, thought he saw a smile in return and braved the treacherous snow.

As the first heated gust touched his armor, in the distance a smattering of tree tops emerged from the eternal ice; following that beckoning, he found that the path led within the earth, into a warm, verdant cavern. The minstrel followed, taking in the waterfalls trickling against the red earth walls, the tall shamrock-lilies, the smell of sulfur that permeated the place.

In the old days, the Master-General would have reported such a discovery to his Emperor and Khaylmer’s whispers would have filled Soliam’s mind until the Empire’s legions marched over it. Sahr’s banners would fill the air, waving like burning fires. Gol stood still in the cavern’s entrance and closed his eyes until those images of the past faded from his sight. Sahr was no more, not to Soliam, not to him.

The whispers did not cease.

In the center of the cavern, surrounded by a crowd of rapt imps, Khaylmer stood, imposing, monstrous, mutated. The Tattered Mantle, aide to the First Empress, embraced him as Khaylmer had always worn it in their homeland, but in this land of miracles, the relic had come to envelop him as a burial shroud. Its hem twisted and slithered as if alive.

“We can... conquer... again,” he said, his belabored voice barely rising over the fog of whispers that was Khaylmer and the Mantle at once, at times letting the words flow in unison, often struggling against each other, currents clashing in painful whirlwinds.

Torn shreds of fabric all turned toward the Master-General like a hydra’s heads before Khaylmer’s own eyes took notice of the intrusion. He raised a bloated arm to greet him in an echo of his old courtly mannerisms, when his speeches and affectation would wear down any soul in the Empire to eventually bend to his will. Enthralled by their past, Gol Golathanian took a step forward, as if to accept that invite, and observing himself he shivered, shaken by a sick fear that had not taken him even when he had stood to face the Serpent-Titan alone.

“The... Empire is... no more,” Khaylmer said to him.

“Correct, sir,” said the minstrel, sensing perhaps Golathanian’s distrust, as the Eight had not received news from the lands above since the last of them had fallen downriver. “The stars have turned.”

Khaylmer’s voice rose above theirs. “We can start… from here. The land is rich. The people...” he gestured to the imps surrounding him, who screeched in enthusiasm. “...willing. Greatness is at hand...”

He spoke of the turmoil that had taken over the Empire, their old home, now unsalvageable. His words had lost their silky sheen; cracks formed between them (between the cracks, one could glimpse at the clear tale of a man who had climbed too high and soon fell, dragging the land with him. One could wonder whether that was the cause of the Mantle’s enmity). Having flown too close to the sun, this husk of Khaylmer had a vision where he sat once again next to the throne of a great ruler, although it was hard to say whether he saw the Master-General himself as this new ruler or as a simple tool to relay the offer to Soliam, or even how much his words rang hollow even to his own ears.

All the harshest thoughts Gol Golathanian had ever spared for the Rope-Caller, that is to say most of them, he found mirrored in the pitiful sight before him. Khaylmer had been stripped down to his basest drives and shared them without filters. It held, in this harsh foreign land, the small comfort of being proved right for all those years of anguished second guesses. Yet Golathanian had long cast all those years behind. In this harsh land which was his new country, his first thought was one of pity. They were wretched, all of the Eight, when they left their homes, and through this land and through their bonds they were washing away the worst of those stains. Why had Khaylmer not followed the same path? Was it the solitude? The relic of a dead past, that mantle which he had let take hold of him completely?

“Khaylmer!” he called out. Taking a step forward, he raised a hand to reach out to him and voiced an appeal: “Your heart is lost in the Empire. Embrace the truth of this land, that we can be our better selves.”

Khaylmer, or what was left of him, did appear to heed those words, although the Master-General would then lose many a night’s sleep debating with himself whether the moment was genuine or part of a ruse, which was, after all, all the great traitor had ever known. The mantle’s grip around him loosened, draping itself around him like a gown, and he stepped down from his makeshift podium, followed by long tattered tethers which writhed in his wake. He stood in front of Golathanian, who took in the sight of his erstwhile foe’s empty eyes and desiccated skin and thought of demons, and offered him his hand again. That connection, he would later swear, was genuine. For an instant, he would say, the highest values of mercy and honor to which he had pledged his life shone through them both. He still knows not why the tide changed, whether for ill intent or a dire mistake.

So he was waiting for the old aide to take his hand, but Khaylmer’s arms lay atrophied at his sides, with nary a muscle left to lift them. Instead, one of the mantle’s extremities shot past Golathanian, toward the minstrel. The General’s warrior instincts were never dampened: as the thing slithered next to him, he raised Oathtaker and planted the tower shield over the writhing fabric, halting it in its track to protect his companion. He turned toward them, to ascertain their safety; the smile he got in return appreciated the gesture, but remained distant, as if they had never been in danger at all.

The imps around them cheered. As that clamor subsided, the two of them realized that Khaylmer was screaming in pain, in a hoarse, strangled yowl. A second tether coiled itself around Gol’s ankle; with his free hand, the General unsheathed his short sword and cut it off. It bled. Briefly, like the last rivulet leaving a dried riverbed. Then it fell to the ground, limp, as did Khaylmer, bled out, dead.

It was over. The imps cheered again. Gol Golathanian felt a deep loneliness descend upon him and wished to return to the company of his fellow Scribes, to the sanctuary of his liege’s words and piercing gaze.

They sailed back. The Eight welcomed back their unity. Soliam Murr, last of his name, listened to his General’s tale and took his pain upon himself, and Khaylmer’s as well, in the end.

“The mantle killed him,” he ruled eventually. “We did not meet him. We shall avoid the isle, which shall bear his name, and some manner of dignity shall be afforded to him, in death, at least.”


End file.
